The Jewelry Case Read Online Free Page A

morning, waiting for Grandma and Grandpa to arrive before unwrapping her presents.
    Sensing her impatience, Ray produced a key, unlocked the lock-box, and waited for her to precede him. "Let's take a look-see, shall we?" he said cheerfully.
    The house smelled musty but not unpleasantly so, like dried rose petals. Ray had told her the place hadn't been lived in for nearly a year, ever since Esther had gone into the nursing home. Sunlight shafted through unwashed windows which, once cleaned, would afford a nice view of the lowest branches of the towering oak tree out front, with the dangling hummingbird feeder that, in the old days, would have been filled with cherry-red liquid.
    Dominating the room was a black Yamaha baby grand piano, its sleek lines softened by a gray layer of dust. This must be the piano Jonathan had learned to play on. She experimentally plunked a few keys and determined it was badly out of tune. That was no problem. With the right tools, she suspected she could tune it herself, a skill she had learned at the conservatory before meeting Jonathan.
    Jonathan. It must have been a sacrifice for his parents to afford the instrument, she thought, looking around at the middle-class furnishings, which were comfortable but inexpensive. Most families of their class wouldn't have bothered to buy a piano, or would have settled on a cheaper brand, but music had always been important to the Perlemans. He had once talked of a famous singer in his lineage, back in Poland.
    A cabinet-style hi-fi from the late 1960s along one wall retained a certain mid-century chic, and she thought with a new sense of pragmatism that it might be worth a couple of hundred bucks at a vintage store. Then her gaze fell on a bookcase crammed with LP albums, and she forgot everything else.
    At her gasp, Ray folded his arms across his barrel chest, looking bored. "Yeah, must be a few hundred records there. Some probably belonged to Jonathan's parents, the rest would be Esther's."
    "Uh huh." She was not really listening as she kneeled to sift through record covers. There were enough to stock a small shop. Pulling out a 1960s Carmen , she ran a finger over the image of a sloe-eyed, black-haired prima donna on the cover. "Did you know Maria Callas never played Carmen on stage, although she was famous for singing the role?"
    "No kidding." Ray glanced at his thick gold watch, but she refused to be hurried. Feeling a new rush of gratitude to the old woman she had hardly known, Paisley moved on to a stack of CDs.
    "What do you know?" she exclaimed, holding up the top one. The photographer had caught Jonathan in the middle of conducting a concert in Berlin. His lean, sensitive face glittered with sweat, his black hair fell in tousled strands across his high forehead. She'd always loved how distinguished Jonathan looked in white tie and tails, his graceful hand wielding the baton so skillfully. This CD had been his most successful; it had even been nominated for a Grammy.
    "I never had a chance to record one of my own," she said wistfully, running a finger across the cover. "There were a couple of cast albums, of course, when I was in the chorus, and you can probably find a couple of my performances on YouTube, but I'd hoped that this fall I'd finally …. "
    She abruptly shoved the CD back and pushed herself to her feet. "Let's see the rest of the house."
    In the kitchen, she stifled a groan when she saw the harvest-gold refrigerator and peeling laminate cupboards. She turned on the faucet, and a stream of brown water spurted out. "I thought you said the utilities had been turned off," she said, turning.
    "Guess I was wrong." Ray flicked a light switch, and after a few seconds, fluorescent tubes overhead flickered on, their harsh light making her blink. "Esther must have had the electricity on auto pay."
    Paisley walked on, opening and closing doors. A cramped pantry, painted mint-green, was partly filled with canned goods, boxes of breakfast cereal, and a